For Ecuador's Lenn Moreno, Evicting Julian Assange Is Only the Beginning

[Judi Lynn]

The Ecuadorian president is seeking to broadly reverse Rafael Correa’s legacy.
BY CARLOS DE LA TORRE | APRIL 22, 2019, 11:01 AM



After almost seven years of diplomatic protection, Julian Assange’s diminishing good will with Ecuador ran out. On April 11, Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had been given asylum in 2012 by then-President Rafael Correa to avoid international criticism that his government was restricting freedom of expression. By protecting Assange, Correa also became an icon of the global political left.

Ecuador’s current president, Lenín Moreno—Correa’s former vice president, protégé, and hand-picked successor—not only expelled Assange from the embassy but also stripped him of the Ecuadorian citizenship granted by the government in 2017. Leftists around the world saw Moreno’s action as the culmination of his betrayal of Correa’s legacy.

First, he broke with Correa, and then he announced a popular referendum to be held in 2018, in which Ecuadorians voted overwhelmingly to reject the possibility of Correa’s re-election. (Although Correa, who is living in Belgium, is unlikely to return anytime soon—a judge has ordered his arrest in Ecuador based on his alleged participation in the failed kidnapping of an Ecuadorian opposition politician in Colombia.) Correa and his supporters argue that Moreno’s action shows the total reversal of his foreign policy. But Assange’s expulsion is only one example of how Moreno has largely reversed Correa’s plans for Ecuador since his election in 2017.

When Assange first sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy, Correa had been in power for six years and was leading a charge to upend all of the country’s political institutions. A participatory constituent assembly drafted a new constitution that enhanced several rights—and even gave rights to nature—while concentrating power in the hands of the presidency. Correa put the state at the center of development. Ecuador, a member of OPEC, counts on oil as one of its largest sources of export revenue. By reaping the fruits of extraordinarily high oil prices, Correa had the resources to increase the size of the state, redistribute income, and reduce poverty. Yet in doing so he also increased the country’s economic dependency on the extraction of oil and minerals, and just in time for 2014’s steep drop in oil prices.

More:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/22/for-ecuadors-lenin-moreno-evicting-julian-assange-is-only-the-beginning/